Alignment on 2048 or cylinder for replacement HDD

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skrewdover
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2012 3:19 pm

Alignment on 2048 or cylinder for replacement HDD

Post by skrewdover »

Using Vista x64; BIBM 1.12a. Replacing the OS disk that was failing.
Will be restoring an image of C:\, taken w/ Acronis TI '09, on the new SATA 2 drive.

In BIBM, old HDD appears alignment of C:\ on OLD HDD was on 2048, but BIBM shows no alignment info for the several other extended partitions.

1) For THIS image restoration purposes (image taken w/ TI), does it matter if the new partition I create to restore image of C:\ to, is 2048 OR cylinder aligned?
My understanding is Vista (& its Disk Mgr) use 2048, but I DON'T use Vista's disk mgr much for partition mgmt.

2) Given an answer to 1), does it really matter what alignment is used for OTHER - Extended - partitions, on same disk as booting C:\? Or would you always want to use same alignment for all partition on same (SATA) disk?

3) The other partitions (extended) will have data copied back into them, not image restored. Reason: due to SMART failure of old HDD, copied non-booting partitions off, using fastest method.

Thanks.
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Alignment on 2048 or cylinder for replacement HDD

Post by TeraByte Support »

BootIt doesn't care - but you should probably align on the SSD drive. If
you want to see if it's aligned, just device the starting lba by 2048 and if
it has no remainder then it's 2048 aligned.

"skrewdover" wrote in message news:3546@public.bootitbm...

Using Vista x64; BIBM 1.12a. Replacing the OS disk that was failing.

In BIBM, old HDD appears alignment of C:\ on OLD HDD was on 2048, but BIBM
shows no alignment info for the several other extended partitions.

1) For THIS image restoration purposes (image taken w/ TI), does it matter
if the new partition I create to restore image of C:\ to, is 2048 OR
cylinder aligned?
My understanding is Vista (& its Disk Mgr) use 2048, but I DON'T use Vista's
disk mgr much for partition mgmt.

2) Given an answer to 1), does it really matter what alignment is used for
OTHER - Extended - partitions, on same disk as booting C:\? Or would you
always want to use same alignment for all partition on same (SATA) disk?

3) The other partitions (extended) will have data copied back into them, not
image restored. Reason: due to SMART failure of old HDD, copied
non-booting partitions off, using fastest method.

Thanks.

skrewdover
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Oct 22, 2012 3:19 pm

Re: Alignment on 2048 or cylinder for replacement HDD

Post by skrewdover »

Thanks for reply - but 1st, I didn't say there's an SSD (there's not). I'm not sure if that's what you thought, because of statement, "... should probably align on the SSD drive."

Obviously, drives / Vista also uses 2048 alignment (and / or CHS) for non SSD drives.
I wasn't worried if BIBM cares about 2048 vs CHS alignment - I'm interested if the restored image of Vista would care about the alignment of a partition created on a new SATA HDD.

I wound up using 2048 alignment (by default) for the new, booting OS partition. First used another partitioning tool that did NOT specify (or have option to choose) to see which alignment method it used. It used 2048 alignment by default for the 1st, Primary, Active partition on disk.

Since I created the new partition & MBR on a new disk, I didn't restore the MBR from the image of C: drive. Apparently that was OK, as restored Vista booted.

Don't know if there's ANY significance to this, but on the 2048 aligned OS boot drive, BIBM showed the CHS values were 1022 / 254 /63. Almost, but not quite the typical 1023 / 254 / 63 CHS aligned values.
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Alignment on 2048 or cylinder for replacement HDD

Post by TeraByte Support »

vista won't care about the alignment.

"skrewdover" wrote in message news:3553@public.bootitbm...

Thanks for reply - but 1st, I didn't say there's an SSD (there's not). I'm
not sure if that's what you thought, because of statement, "... should
probably align on the SSD drive."

Obviously, drives / Vista also uses 2048 alignment (and / or CHS) for non
SSD drives.
I wasn't worried if BIBM cares about 2048 vs CHS alignment - I'm interested
if the restored image of Vista would care about the alignment of a partition
created on a new SATA HDD.

I wound up using 2048 alignment (by default) for the new, booting OS
partition. First used another partitioning tool that did NOT specify (or
have option to choose) to see which alignment method it used. It used 2048
alignment by default for the 1st, Primary, Active partition on disk.

Since I created the new partition & MBR on a new disk, I didn't restore the
MBR from the image of C: drive. Apparently that was OK, as restored Vista
booted.

Don't know if there's ANY significance to this, but on the 2048 aligned OS
boot drive, BIBM showed the CHS values were 1022 / 254 /63. Almost, but not
quite the typical 1023 / 254 / 63 CHS aligned values.

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